


MARIGOLDS

by mossymushroom



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8101009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossymushroom/pseuds/mossymushroom
Summary: "Still I recall her, golden as a wreath of champaka flowers, I recollect her as she rose from sleep, like knowledge carelessness has failed to keep."Some love stories burn as bright and fast as stars, but some bloom only after putting down roots.





	1. Prologue: Put Your Security In My Hands

The first attack on the Temple of Anubis happens a few years after Overwatch collapses. Fareeha, still a lieutenant in the Egyptian Army, thinks it’s ridiculous to call the armed forces out instead of the police, but that’s before she sees the damage. Her superior officers are whispering around her as she sends her team out to look for casualties. It might be terrorists, a legitimate act of war by foreign forces, an internal coup, but no one can name any suspects; they can’t even think of a motive. Who would attack a tourist trap in broad daylight, for no apparent reason, and not even take credit? What would they want?

There aren’t any bodies, just a few scraped knees and some nosey Americans Fareeha shepherds to a temporary med station a safe distance away. She hops on top of a roof to survey the wreckage. Some busted coffee shops, piles of glass and ancient brick, scaffolding all collapsed in the entrance of the temple. Fresh pockmarks on the walls, bullet holes, ripping through an old recruitment poster, peeling so the shadowy images of her mother and Jack Morrison curl sadly on themselves.

She wonders if it was Ana who was here, who destroyed everything and disappeared, leaving nothing behind, not even a fingerprint, not even a word.

The next day, she’s called into a sober office she’s never been to before. Behind the desk is a well-decorated general she doesn’t know, with a spread of digital files laid out neatly on the dark wood. He has, he says, a proposal for her. He hands her a file. EYES ONLY is printed in a shifting array of languages at the top. She scrolls down while he makes his pitch, picking out key words: experimental exo-armor, flight-enabled, joint project, Raptora, underground containment. Former Overwatch sites. She snaps back to attention. 

“You want glory, you want honor, this is it. The real deal.” He leans in and grips her knee, suddenly intense. “The real question is: how far are you willing to go for your duty, Amari? How much are you willing to give up?”

Fareeha licks her lips, feeling an immense and cold urgency looming over her, threatening to crash like a wave. But a lack of ambition never was one of her faults. “Everything.”

The general sits back, mouth stretching in what might be a smile on another man. “Then you'll sign here.” He hands her a stylus and she signs, hand shaking almost unnoticeably, at the bottom of the document. As he stands to leave, he squeezes her shoulder, paternal and possessive. “Amari, I know you hear this from the brass a lot, but you really are doing your country proud. Your people thank you, soldier.”

“It’s an honor, sir.” She doesn't bother correcting him, doesn't say that her country wasn't really what—or who—she was thinking of at all.


	2. Poster Girl

Fareeha wakes at dawn without an alarm. It takes her less than ten minutes to get out of bed, attach her legs, run them through some basic warm-ups, and make her bunk neatly—a remnant of military life, though, technically, she’s been a civilian for nearly four years. Old habits die hard, she supposes.

She takes an extra few minutes to readjust her legs, test their responsiveness, and check the hardened carbon for scratches before she heads into the hallway. Helix Security’s new contract with Vishkar Corp to coordinate post-Ra disaster clean-up means multiple photo ops with Atlas News, and that means eye-appealing demonstrations of fancy flying. Anything to reassure the public that the Raptora program is actually worth the expense. The day before, Hafiz in PR made her drop her suit off at the armory for a full tune-up—she’d only complained about her helmet visor sticking a bit, and suddenly he was having fits at the possibility of a critical failure in front of the reporters. She barely escaped with her legs by reminding him that she didn’t have any replacements, and how would it look if some paparazzi snapped her without them and the public saw how little faith they had in their own tech, and so on. He made her give up the exo-armor plates for polishing, still.

She walks out of the dorms, stepping lightly so the sharp clack of her soles on the vinyl floor doesn’t wake the rest of the squad. Her squad, now. It’s been a few months, long enough that the grief has mostly faded, and she tries to suppress the guilty little blush of pleasure when she thinks: her team, her people.

Outside she glances at the sky—pink tinged with blue, dreamily filtering the brown and gray expanse of the Giza plateau into a soft haze—and decides she still has time for a run and a shower before Hafiz bustles her off to the publicity briefing, the first of many. She takes a deep breath and pushes off, chasing the slight breeze and, with each satisfying pump of her legs, letting herself slip further into Pharah, captain of the Raptora Unit.

Hafiz catches her right as she’s coming out of the dorm showers, shouts about being late for prep, and steers her toward the shuttle bay, shoving old-fashioned paper pages of key talking points into her hands. Fareeha has always been a little awed at his overly fastidious notes, the sheer thoroughness of his planning, something she wishes she could do but never found the inclination to be good at. She flips through the docket, scanning over all the fussy sidenotes on what to do if she forgets the official stance (unlikely), if her suit critically malfunctions (more unlikely), if the reporter trips suddenly and hits her head on a loose stone and dies (definitely not going to happen). As usual, she’s better off just asking for the highlights.

“Officially, Helix is thrilled to have received this contract, delighted to work with Vishkar Corp, represents a bold new direction for both companies, private security, expansion of hardlight tech, et cetera et cetera.” Hafiz frantically waves over the mechanics with her suit and bullies them onto the shuttle, takes a second to complain about “useless waste of time techies” giving him heart problems, then ushers them offboard again and slams the door.

Fareeha mouths an apology through the window and starts going through her armor, sorting pieces and noting any differences the mechanics made. Mostly just cosmetic, it seems, nothing she couldn’t have done herself, and her visor is still sticking when she tries to lift it up. The shuttle sways unsteadily out of the gate, and she adjusts her legs to keep from sliding along the floor.

“Unofficially, I want to talk to you about this architech they’re sending out. She’s an unknown quantity.” Hafiz presses his fingers to his temples and paces the cabin, bumping into the walls as they shudder along the plateau. “I spoke to her...handler. He wouldn’t even put me on the line with her, just told me to keep the topic on the project.”

“Hafiz, what was the point of this?” she complains, shaking her breastplate at him. “They didn’t even do anything.”

He clicks his tongue and makes a hushing gesture, pinching his fingers and thumb together and pulling down sharply. “Are you listening to me? You’re going to have to carry this one, Amari. That reporter, Olympia Shaw, she’s got this fixation on Overwatch too, I think she’ll ask about Grand Mesa, and the architech—”

After this long as a spokesperson, she should be used to people asking about Overwatch, about her mother. She’s not. A prickly little restlessness hovers just below the surface of her skin, but she pushes it aside and shoots Hafiz her most charming smile, hoisting her launcher. “Break out the big guns. Got it.”

“You’re an animal, I want you to know that,” he snaps, and tosses a handful of papers at her. “You are going to kill me, you big meathead animal.”

“It’s a joke. I know better than to shoot the architech. I’ll try not to shoot Shaw either, but no promises.” She winks. “‘Play nice, play Pharah’, right?”

“Inshallah,” says Hafiz moodily, slumping into a seat and covering his eyes.

Good enough for her. She starts attaching her exo-armor, enjoying its smooth slip over her limbs, the comforting familiar heft of it on her brittle carbon-composite legs, the way it makes her hard and shiny as a beetle. There’s a few more minutes before they land, and she disassembles and reassembles her launcher just to savor the muscle-memory ritual of it, smoothing away her jitters.

They disembark a bit after ten, the late March sun just starting to slant warmly through the pillars. Hafiz—having spent the entire ride with his hand draped over his eyes grumbling dramatically about a headache—swears loudly when he sees the time, snatches up all his notes, slicks his hair back, asks Fareeha nonsensically how he looks, and tumbles out of the shuttle with his hand outstretched to meet Olympia’s, all in the span of less than a minute. A new record—Fareeha is impressed.

“Olympia, hello,” he says smoothly in English, giving her hand a firm, professional shake. “Welcome to Giza! I apologize for our tardiness, I hope you haven’t been kept long?”

“Lovely to see you again, Hafiz! Don’t worry about the wait. We just got here ourselves—I was just taking a look around. Miss Vaswani has been raving about the architecture since we arrived.” Olympia gestures to a stern woman, dressed in an austere and well-pressed suit and hair pulled up tightly, examining the Temple with a little frown of distaste. She does not, Fareeha thinks, look at all like the raving type. Olympia calls her over for introductions.

Vaswani nods her head briskly at Hafiz, neutrally refusing his handshake, and stares at Fareeha’s face right underneath her eyes. “Why didn’t you do both sides?” she demands; without waiting for an answer she continues, “Never mind. You are late. We must stay on schedule.” She strides away. Bewildered, Fareeha watches her go: her movements are surprisingly smooth, graceful in the intentional, well-practiced way of a gymnast. 

“Kind of an odd one, eh?” says Hafiz, smirking.

Fareeha plasters on a thin, practiced smile and shoves her helmet at him, with maybe a little more force than necessary. “Still sticking a bit,” she says, pointed, and squares her shoulders before following doggedly.

The interview isn’t as awful as Hafiz claimed it would be, but it’s close. The architech’s answers are stiff and obviously rehearsed, no real feeling or personality behind them, and Fareeha has to work double to keep Olympia from snapping and releasing an exposé on predatory corporate trusts instead of her soft interest piece. Luckily she’s a fan of the original Overwatch and Fareeha presses her advantage, wooing her with stories of Jack Morrison and firmly not allowing the architech to talk until Olympia is starry-eyed and totally charmed. Hafiz mouths directions over Vaswani’s shoulder, increasingly hysterical. He nearly gasps with relief when they break to let the photographer set up.

“Ya Allah, no wonder Koppal never let me talk to her, she’s a PR nightmare.” He slaps Fareeha’s back in a way that is probably meant to be encouraging and takes bracing gulps from a bottle of water. “Never mind all that, you’re doing great, all we have left is the photos, easy.”

Fareeha, roasting and wishing she’d waited to put on her armor until after the interview, scowls. “Easy. Right.”

The architech is checking her comm, scrolling through the readout on her visor using a clever little hardlight tool she pulls from a generator in her palm. “Miss Shaw,” she says abruptly, “I’m afraid we’ll need to cut this short. We’ve gone past our schedule. I’ll meet you all here again tomorrow morning, as discussed.”

“Discussed with who?” Fareeha says, thrown off-balance. She swivels around to look at Olympia and Hafiz. “Olympia, did we discuss that? I thought we were finishing today?”

She shrugs. “Sanjay Koppal mentioned something like this might be necessary, but I didn’t plan for our interview to go on so long, so…Miss Vaswani, wait, we can arrange a later pick-up—”

“Speak to my liaison, please,” calls the architech, already halfway to the street.

For lack of anything else to do, they all watch her pick her way nimbly through the rubble, the stark white of her suit too clean amongst all the detritus and dust. Olympia sucks her tongue, arms crossed; Hafiz kicks a rock and swears eloquently. Fareeha just flexes her fingers around her launcher, restless and irritable and, not for the first time, sick of reporters, interviews, all this silly corporate bullshit.

***

When Fareeha gets the call from Winston before sunrise the next morning, it’s not on her official Helix comm, but on her mother’s old one, claimed years ago from a box of “effects”, as the mortician called them. She thinks it must be a mistake, that he was trying to call someone else, but answers anyway. There’s too much history there for her to let it go to voicemail, the sterile message she recorded about her mother being MIA, presumed dead.

“Fareeha, hello,” he says, stiff and awkward.

She remembers how long it’s been since she last called and winces. “Hello, Winston. It’s been a long time. How are you?”

“I—fine, I guess, but Fareeha, I wanted to tell you—I’m recalling Overwatch.” There’s a short silence—Fareeha trying to process what he said, Winston waiting for her to respond, probably. She casts around for something to say besides “oh” and “why” and “but everything’s gone to shit”, but he beats her to it. “I, uh, I just wanted to tell you, if you wanted to join, I mean, we would love to have you. Lena’s already on board, she thought you might—you don’t have to decide now, actually we’re waiting on a few others too, so. Uh.”

Fareeha’s heart gives a bold little flip. Overwatch reinstated, with herself invited to join, the chance to work next to its original members and do some real good, be a real hero—she doesn’t even have to think about it, it’s an instinctive yes, everything she’s ever wanted. The restless itch eases a little and she find herself smiling so hugely it’s hard to talk around it. She pulls herself back in as much as she can and says, a little formally, “Of course. Of course I’ll join.”

“I mean I don’t think we could pay you as much as Helix, our resources are almost gone, but—um. You will?” He sounds tentatively hopeful and a bit shocked, the way someone does who believed they made a terrible mistake but now finds the outcome to be working out against all odds.

“Winston. Yes.” Fareeha lets genuine joy warm her voice and hopes it’s enough to reassure him. There’s no script here for her to read and at this point she’s a little lost without it, but they’re all going off the book now. She doesn’t even mind, actually, they don’t need it. Overwatch has always done what’s necessary, what’s best, and it’s Fareeha’s firm belief that the public would see that eventually, no PR or spokesperson or bureaucrats necessary. But she didn’t get to where she is by idealism alone, and she adds pragmatically, “What exactly will we be doing?”

She can almost hear his grin, contagious even over the scratchy comm. “Why, Captain Amari—we’re going to save the world.”

Fareeha gets to the shuttle bay early, to Hafiz’ cautious pleasure, and spends the trip cheerfully and attentively listening to his notes, to his growing panic. “Amari,” he says urgently, in the middle of drilling approved Helix phrases into her head, “did someone die? Are _you_ dying? Are you trying to make amends to me? Wait, are you about to kill me?”

She snorts. “I’m just in a good mood, Hafiz, relax.”

“I have never once seen you in a good mood at one of these. There must be something in the water. No, hold on, it’s the end of the world.”

She smiles behind her fist and bounces on her heels, springy and buoyant. She hasn’t told anyone about the call, about her decision, just letting herself luxuriate in the feeling of finally having a plan and a purpose, crystallizing like spun sugar and stretching out sweetly in front of her. Hafiz, poor thing, would shit himself if he knew, or maybe have a heart attack—best to keep it on lock.

Hafiz squints at her. “You look feverish. Don’t fuck this up, we already know we can’t depend on Vaswani.”

Fareeha hums neutrally and looks away, watching the city speed, blurry and warm, beneath the shuttle. 

“You’re early,” the architech notes when they disembark five minutes before ten. Of course she’s already there, looking elegant and unruffled with her hands clasped neatly behind her back. She’s inspecting a small hardlight rendering of the Temple, a projection of the Vishkar development proposal.

“Did you make this?” asks Fareeha, admiring. She knows about hardlight in theory, of course, has seen buildings brought up in a blink by teams of architechs, but this is completely different, finely detailed and filled with graceful sweeping curves and stately pillars. It’s coded in different colors—a cool aqua for areas of hardlight, muted gold for the native marble and brick—sleekly blending proposed reconstruction with existing infrastructure. It looks nothing at all like Fareeha thought it would; she’d been picturing the same generic, utilitarian structures that she’s seen from Rio de Janeiro and Utopea, but this is beautiful, majestic, perfectly Egyptian.

“Clearly I did,” the architech responds acerbically, and makes to break it down again. 

Fareeha catches her wrist as it twists over the model. “Wait, don’t you think you should leave it up? For the photographer?” The architech freezes and glares coldly at Fareeha sidelong, her eyes a striking tawny under thick black lashes, arresting and unexpectedly furious. Fareeha lets go. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—sorry.”

“Miss, ah, Vaswani,” interjects Hafiz, oily and smooth, holding out a clipboard, “perhaps you’d like to go over today’s schedule with me? I have these notes…”

She forgets, sometimes, how genuinely good at his job he is underneath all the neuroses, how well it suits him, and she allows herself a tiny, biting moment of envy as he mollifies the architech, deliberately bland and agreeable, the eminent people person. Her hands curl and uncurl mechanically around her rocket launcher, desperate for action. Not much longer now.

Olympia and her photographer ask for all the usual stunts and demos of Raptora’s maneuverability—Fareeha runs through them without complaint and even throws in a few flashy moves of her own, relaxing back into her good mood and flirting outrageously with Olympia just for the meaningless fun of it. Hafiz groans theatrically in the background; the architech, when Fareeha thinks to look for her, is standing just off to the side, flicking through the feed on her visor, stone-faced and plainly uncomfortable.

“Hey, Olympia,” Fareeha says as she lands, carefully casual, “did you get to see this model Miss Vaswani brought? I know you already have the blueprints, but this makes it so much more real, I think. Might be nice for your piece.”

Olympia, predictably, exclaims over its beauty, gasps at all the detail, asks all sorts of questions about its construction. The architech’s mouth curves in a tiny smile—it’s the most outwardly happy Fareeha’s seen her yet, or if not quite happy then more at ease. Olympia inquires about hardlight tech and its applications with genuine, probing interest, and as Vaswani gives each an extremely thorough answer, Fareeha warms with the second-hand satisfaction of watching someone who is highly skilled demonstrate exactly the ways in which they’re skilled. 

As they’re all packing up, Vaswani hangs back hesitantly, like she’s got something to say but hasn’t quite made up her mind on whether she should or not. Fareeha glances over to where Hafiz and Olympia are deeply engaged in making lunch plans, neither of them focused on her, and stops to let her catch up. 

“I would like to meet with you, off the record,” she says, looking somewhere past Fareeha’s shoulder.

“Off the record?” Fareeha coughs uncertainly. “If you have questions about the project, my superiors would be happy to—”

“No, Captain Amari,” Vaswani interrupts, with a flat, impassive tone that could mean either long-suffering patience or intense irritation, Fareeha’s not sure. “I need to meet with _you_. I have an offer you may wish to hear, but it must be off the record, preferably somewhere inconspicuous. Please provide me with your private comm details so that I may contact you later.” Fareeha does, too disconcerted to say no.

On the shuttle, Hafiz pins her with a ferociously curious look. Not so distracted, then. “What did she want with you?”

“Oh—nothing,” says Fareeha, but she’s not sure why.

***

They arrange to meet the next day in a cafe Fareeha’s been meaning to try for ages, a homey little place in Cairo proper, wonderfully cool in the mid-afternoon heat. Fareeha surveys the room—tiny, decorated with well-loved carpets, stuffed with more plants than there are customers—and half wishes she’d been able to find an excuse to come sooner, before she left for Gibraltar. At least no one will know her: less bad publicity if things go belly-up with Vishkar and she has to explain why she was fraternizing with their lead architech right before she left.

Vaswani arrives shortly, dressed conspicuously in her Vishkar uniform. Fareeha, herself in bug-eyed sunglasses and long trousers to hide her more distinctive features, snorts. “So much for keeping a low profile,” she jokes. The architech—Vaswani, Fareeha reminds herself—shoots her a blank look, and she clears her throat uncomfortably. “Ah, would you like to take a seat? And about this offer…”

Vaswani sits and straightens her shoulders; Fareeha is distinctly reminded of seeing a speech her mother gave once, the way she paused before stepping to the podium to mentally shuffle her ideas into order, like a deck of cards. “I have come to the decision to leave Vishkar. After working in several zones which have become critically destabilized by Vishkar’s involvement, I believe that Vishkar’s methodology, although guided by ultimately well-meaning ideals, is at cross purposes with my own. I know you have recently been in contact with former Overwatch members—”

Fareeha chokes on her limonana. “You know _what_? How?”

“—and that these members have been planning to subvert the PETRAS Act by renewing operations,” Vaswani barrels on, raising her voice a little. “I propose that I would be an excellent addition. The resources and network of contacts provided by Overwatch would be ideal for protecting me from Vishkar’s agents, should they wish to pursue me in retribution for breaking contract. Moreover, my skills with hardlight are unparalleled and I have extensive experience in biomechanics, engineering, and field work, particularly excelling in acquiring classified information.” She pauses for breath and adds, “As for how I know—I am very good at what I do.”

Fareeha leans back, shell-shocked and speechless. “So you want to—do you want something to drink?” She motions for their server without waiting for an answer, orders herself another limonana and drums her fingers on the table zealously as Vaswani gives fastidious instructions for tea with cardamom and anise, white, two sugars. Is this just how it’s going to be, then? She doesn’t remember her mother having to deal with civilians recruiting themselves—but then again, Overwatch had never been so hard up for talent as right now. She examines Vaswani closely. Her nails are immaculately manicured, not a single uneven shape or chip in the nude polish. Her suit is the same crisp white as the one she wore at the interviews; Fareeha wonders if she has any other clothes. Her prosthetic might as well be an unused factory model for all the wear it shows. She mentioned field work, but Fareeha can’t imagine this woman in the middle of a fight at all. Or anywhere less orderly than a museum, for that matter.

She waits until the omnic walks away to continue. “Okay, listen, can you just tell me what, exactly, brought this all on? From what I hear, Vishkar treats its ‘techs well. I’m not sure what you think Overwatch could offer that you don’t already have. And obviously all of that is contingent on Overwatch’s _hypothetical_ reinstatement, which I’m not admitting to either way.”

At some point Vaswani’s started pulling little hardlight figures from her palm. Fareeha watches with mild interest—her fingers move with a grace that’s almost performative, elegantly sketching dodecahedrons and casting them like dice onto the tabletop. Pretty, Fareeha thinks, but not practical. “There was a fire, in a region I developed. I...have reason to believe it was set by Vishkar. I cannot condone such actions.”

The waiter brings them their drinks. Vaswani takes a sip of her tea and quickly sets it back down again, grimacing like it’s unspeakably bitter. “Captain Amari—”

“Don’t call me that. I mean, Captain Amari was my mother. Call me Fareeha.”

“Fareeha,” Vaswani repeats reluctantly. “I am an extremely valuable asset. I cannot stress this enough. If there’s anything I can do to prove myself—”

“I haven’t even admitted Overwatch is being reinstated, which it isn’t—”

“I have this.” She sweeps her pile of constructs aside and sets a golden hardlight shape, no bigger than Fareeha’s thumb nail, on the table between them. Inside, mostly obscured by the glow, is a data chip. “Consider this a demonstration of my skills. I had intended to present it to your intelligence department, but it may be more effective with you.”

Fareeha eyes it warily. It might be as innocuous as blueprints or something, but if it’s anything that could involve her in corporate espionage, she’d rather cut off another limb than touch it. 

Her comm buzzes and the display lights up with Hafiz’ face, abusing his privacy mode override privileges again. She sighs and opens the call, motioning for Vaswani to wait a minute.

“Where the hell are you?” he demands. “I’ve got twenty—twenty!—separate calls about some Overwatch nonsense, everyone wants you to make a statement and—hold on, is that the Vishkar 'tech with you? What do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re just getting coffee, it’s not a big—”

“Fine, whatever, I don’t care, but you need to get back here now and put all this bullshit to rest.”

Fareeha looks at the data chip and takes a deep breath. “It’s not bullshit.”

“It’s not...Excuse me?”

“It’s not bullshit, Hafiz. Overwatch is recalled. You can tell everyone I’m joining, that’s my statement.”

“That better be a joke, Amari.” He waits for her to respond. She says nothing. “You—are you _out of your fucking mind_? Does the PETRAS Act mean _nothing_? Am I speaking in tongues? And how the _fuck_ do you plan on making this work when you have an exclusive contract with Helix? I do not get paid enough to deal with your shit, by the way, and—”

“Hafiz, you absolute knob,” Fareeha interrupts giddily, “I _quit_.” In an act of titanic willpower she doesn’t laugh out loud at the way his whole face goes slack, gaping like a fish. “Miss Vaswani,” she says, coolly snapping off the comm, “on behalf of the newly recalled Overwatch, I will keep your proposal in mind.”

Vaswani doesn’t look up from the growing number of hardlight structures—now sorted into four neat piles—just nods stiffly. Nerves, Fareeha thinks, sympathetic. She can relate.

**Author's Note:**

> more tags, characters, etc will be added as we progress. thanks to [peter](plentyharmonium.tumblr.com), d, and peach for brainstorming/beta-ing/politely not rolling their eyes while i cry, plus anyone else who i forgot mention bc i'm a wastrel
> 
> this fic uses tons and tons of references. an incomplete list:
> 
> -[overgosh's timeline master post](http://overgosh.tumblr.com/post/147524579927/i-made-a-timeline-after-my-original-post-i-just), which i loosely referenced  
> -neurowonderful's [fantastic blog](http://neurowonderful.tumblr.com/) and their equally fantastic [youtube series "ask an autistic"](https://www.youtube.com/user/neurowonderful)  
> -politeyeti's [revised autism criteria](http://politeyeti.tumblr.com/post/16950331338/revised-alternative-autism-criteria)  
> -richard gombrich's translation of bilhana's epic love poem ["the fifty stanzas of a thief"](http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org/excerpts/CSLLoveBilhana.pdf)  
> -many, many (many many many many) more
> 
> i did quite a bit of research to write satya as sensitively as possible. however, i am allistic—if you have any concerns or questions, please reach out to me on tumblr at [tangentteaparty](tangentteaparty.tumblr.com/ask).
> 
> also, this is my first fic so please comment if you like it! or even if you don't like it!! THANKS FOR READING...!!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Marigolds -- fancomic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8199589) by [mossymushroom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mossymushroom/pseuds/mossymushroom), [NotJess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotJess/pseuds/NotJess)




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